


What Happened to Barton

by TheCockyUndead



Series: Bullet With Your Name [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra goes Order 66 on Clint's ass, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, wrote this way back in the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCockyUndead/pseuds/TheCockyUndead
Summary: Where the hell was Barton anyway?An explanation to as where Clint was during/after Winter Soldier(I know this is hella late, but I actually wrote it right after Winter Soldier came out, but I only was on FF.Net at the time. I'm currently moving all my fics from over there to AO3)





	What Happened to Barton

**Author's Note:**

> I really like this fic, and I hope you all will like it too :) 
> 
> Also, I'm planning on writing a Post Winter Soldier fic that sorta follows after this fic, but I haven't actually written yet. It's in the works and I'm really excited about it (yeah, yeah, I know that there's a million and one fics Post Winter Soldier, but whatever, I'm gonna do what I want).

**[What Happened to Barton]**

“Barton, move your ass.”

Clint stirred from under the covers of his bed at the sound of his handler’s voice. He pushed himself up on one elbow, staring up at Agent Weston through bloodshot eyes and messy hair.

“I just fell asleep,” he said, voice hoarse. He glanced at the glowing clock in the small room. “I fell asleep fifteen minutes ago.” It wasn’t hard to hear the underlining threat in Clint’s voice.

Agent Weston ignored that, still standing at the edge of Clint’s cot. “I don’t care. Get up. Shit’s been going down in Washington at our SHIELD base,” he said. “Now, get up.”

“I’m up,” Clint said, shoving off the covers and swinging his legs over the edge of his cot and standing up. He ran a quick hand down his face, trying to scrub the grittiness from his eyes.

Clint had been awake for over 48 hours, but it wasn’t hard to push aside the fatigue and give in to the adrenaline that was starting to pump through his veins at the idea of something happening back home in his absence.

Within minutes, Clint was dressed and had his gear packed into his black backpack. He secured the room and then met Weston outside the safe house and slid into the waiting car.

Weston barely gave Clint a chance to buckle himself in before he peeled away from the safe house, tires squealing and kicking up gravel.

Tense silence reigned in the car for a couple of miles.

Clint watched the passing scenery of the Nevada desert, but there wasn’t much to see with night hanging heavily over them. He shifted in his seat, turning to Weston, whose eyes were glued to the road.

“So,” Clint started, “I take it my mission here is being put on hold for the time being?”

Weston was staring at the road ahead, the car’s headlights the only light on the empty road. “Yes,” he answered after a few beats of silence.

“So, Fury needs me back at Headquarters?” Clint prodded.

“No.”

Clint frowned. “What? Then who ordered us back? What’s going on, Weston?”

Weston gave him a quick look. “Fury’s dead.”

Clint felt his heart stutter and freeze. “What?”

“He was shot by an unknown assassin fifteen hours ago.”

Clint gave Weston an incredulous look, anger lacing through his features. “He was killed fifteen hours ago and no one thought to tell us?”

Weston didn’t answer, but that was all the answer Clint needed.

He barked out a fake laugh. “Are you shitting me? Fury was killed fifteen hours ago and _you_ didn’t think to tell me?”

“You were in the middle of your mission.”

“I’m in the middle of my mission now too, except the difference is you’ve apparently decided that _now_ is the time that I can be pulled and brought up to speed. Fuck you,” Clint snapped, glaring at the side of Weston’s head.

Weston ignored the anger, focus completely on the road.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, Clint tried to let go of some of his anger, but all the breathing techniques that Bruce taught him was only pushing the anger down to shimmer with a promise of a return.

“Dammit,” Clint muttered, sitting back into his seat. “Who’s running SHIELD?”

Weston gave a shrug, but didn’t answer.

Clint gritted his teeth together and tried again. “Where’s Agent Romanoff? Or Cap?”

Weston’s eyes flicked to Clint before going back to the road again.

Clint’s hands clenched into fists and his arms tensed; something wasn’t right here. Clint had gone through more than a few handlers since Coulson died, but none of them had ever been like this. Weston was clearly on edge, but it wasn’t because of Fury’s death.

No. This was something else. 

The hairs on Clint’s arms were rising and there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Where exactly are we going, Weston?” Clint’s voice was soft, quiet over the hum of the car.

Unsurprisingly, Weston didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. Abruptly, one of his hands was clutching a pistol and had it poking at Clint’s head. The close quarters of the car gave Clint a good view down the black barrel of the gun, an empty and black hole, promising death if Clint made the wrong move.

“Sorry, Barton,” Weston said. “Pierce didn’t think you were going to cooperate and I agree. You never have in the past. Especially when it comes to Romanoff.”

Clint eyed the pistol jabbed at his face before focusing his glare on Weston. “You’re planning on shooting me out here and dumping my body somewhere in the desert and hope that the coyotes get it? Seems like a lot of work. Why didn’t you just kill me in my sleep back at the safe house?”

Weston’s lips thinned.

“No, I get it. You wanted to look me in the face when you pulled the trigger.” Clint paused, a sneer working its way across his lips. “Good. Then do it.”

Weston took his eyes off the road to look at Clint full on.

“I really don’t want to kill you. You’re a good agent and—” That was as far as Weston got.

Clint reached forward and grabbed Weston’s gun arm, shoving it to the side. He slammed it against the two seats.

Weston’s finger tightened on instinct, firing a shot off that whizzed past Clint’s head, shattering his window. Clint twisted Weston’s hand roughly, snapping his trigger finger and finally forcing him to drop the gun. It fell into the depths in the back of the car.

With the pistol out of the way, Clint jabbed his other hand forward, smacking Weston’s face with his fist. Weston’s head snapped to the side, smashing into his window.

Wind whistled into the car from Clint’s broken window, adding to the confusion and chaos.

The car swerved across the road, hitting the shoulder of the highway. At the speed they were going and the rough gravel, the car pitched forward, flipping. It skidded off the road and across the sand, coming to a jarring halt against a lone boulder.

For a moment there was only ringing silence in the car and Clint’s raging heartbeat pumping against his ears. Then he coughed, and the sound rushed back. Not that there was much to hear; the car was steaming and hissing, but that was all to be heard out in the middle of nowhere.

Clint, hanging upside down, looked over to Weston. The other man was unconscious, blood dripping from a large gash on his head.

Clint reached down and unbuckled himself. He thudded against the roof of the car, grunting at the impact. Slowly, he crawled through his broken window, wincing slightly as the broken glass cut into his palms, leaving bloody smears behind.

Once outside in the cool night air, Clint stayed on his hands and knees, trying to regain his equilibrium. Grit and sand clung to him as he carefully pushed himself up to a standing position. He wiped his bloody palms against his dark pants, doing his best to clean the dirt from the open cuts, but there wasn’t really much to be done about that just yet.

Looking from his hands to the wrecked car, Clint heaved a breath out. “Well, shit.”

After a moment more of contemplating his luck, Clint limped back to the car. He wrenched open the back door with some difficulty and picked up his black backpack from where Weston had thrown it. He slung it over his shoulder, taking Weston’s bag in his free hand; when Weston woke up, Clint didn’t want him to have any of his gear.

He then turned his back on the smoldering car, and set off at a slow pace down the highway. Weston was a problem alive, but Clint wasn’t going to kill an unconscious man.

He still didn’t fully understand what the hell was going on, but the fact remained that Weston had just tried to kill him, and Clint wasn’t going to stick around to wait for the agent to take another stab at finishing the job.

Clint took a breath and then started to jog down the middle of the black pavement. The bags on his back, thumped against him, keeping in time with the rhythm of his steps.

“Shiiiiit,” he muttered, gritting his teeth as the movement of running jarred his ribs, which had been bruised only a few hours ago during his half-finished mission. “This is gonna suck.”

.

.

.

After hitching a ride with two semis and a shady van, Clint made it back to something resembling civilization. The tiny town had a diner, a church, and a bar, but not much else. But Clint didn’t need much.

Clint entered the diner, which was loud and busy, the early morning rush reaching a peak.

He limped his way up to the counter, claiming an empty spot. He set both bags down at his feet, kicking them up against the counter, and then gave the older waitress a smile.

She didn’t seem to buy it, giving his bruised and dusty face a critical once over. Clint tried his best to look harmless, and offered her another smile.

With raised eyebrows, she flipped open her notepad, tapping a pencil against it.

“What can I get you?”

“Coffee?” Clint asked, and then nodded vaguely behind her. “And could I use your phone?”

She frowned a little at the second request and Clint felt her opinion of him go down even farther, but she shrugged and motioned to the side of the diner where a battered phone sat on the edge of the counter.

“Thanks,” Clint said, sliding off his stool. He gave the bags a stern look as if that would make sure no one would steal them, before sighing and stooping down to pick them up again. He made his way over to the phone, dropping the bags at his feet again. They made a clunking sound when they made contact with the floor, but Clint ignored that.

A TV hung above him, playing the morning news, but Clint wasn’t paying attention to it; his focus on the phone. He snagged it up and tucked it under his ear. Clint punched in the numbers and waited as it rang. A robotic voice told him the number was disconnected, so Clint hung up and tried a new number.

He continued this process for a few minutes, until finally a female voice spoke through the speaker.

“Who is this?”

“Nat?” Clint asked relief bubbling up.

“Clint.” Relief was sharp in her voice as well. “Where are you?”

“Where are _you_?” Clint said instead. “Weston tried to kill me a few hours ago. He failed, obviously.”

“Thank God you’re okay,” Natasha breathed out. “I didn’t know where you had been sent, and I couldn’t find out after.”

“After what?” Clint said. “Tasha, what’s going on?”

There was silence on Natasha’s end, and Clint frowned, worry curling around his stomach.

“I take it you haven’t seen the news,” Natasha said slowly.

“I’m in the middle of a desert, hitching rides with weird trucker guys for most of the night,” Clint said. “No, I haven’t watched the news. Anything good on?”

“Stow the sarcasm,” Natasha said, with no real bite in her voice. “A lot of shit happened since you’ve been gone.”

Clint shook his head, leaning up against the counter. He raked a hand down his face. “Just tell me.”

But she didn’t have to. The TV above his head did that for her.

 _“We’re not sure what SHIELD did for the government, but that fact that we’ve never heard of it before doesn’t really speak of honesty or transparency.”_ The reporter’s voice was crisp and clear, but it was easy for Clint to hear the relish in her voice at being the one to be reporting on the groundbreaking news. _“However, what we can tell you is that our heroes from New York aren’t what they seemed on the surface. I am, of course, talking about Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, or as most people know them, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Both of these “heroes” were in fact agents for SHIELD.”_

Clint squeezed his eyes shut as the woman continued, moving on to talking about Steve, who was the bigger news here, but that didn’t change that fact that his real name had just been spoken on live television.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Clint said.

“Sorry,” Natasha offered. “It was the only way.”

“Our covers are gone,” Clint continued, trying to work through what he had just been told. “How…? You know what, I don’t think I want to know right now. First, I have to get to wherever the hell you are and then you’re gonna explain exactly what happened.”

“I can tell you it involved Steve and a new guy named Sam,” Natasha said, humor tinging her tone.

“So, what, you have a new best friend now?” Clint demanded. “Awesome. I’m gone for like a week, and suddenly I’ve been replaced with some guy named Sam. Not cool, Nat, not cool.”

Natasha laughed, a rare thing, even in Clint’s experience. “Just come home. I’ll explain it all.”

“You’d better,” Clint warned. “I’m not getting my information about my crumbling job from some lousy news channel in Nevada.”

After exchanging locations, Clint hung up and limped back to his spot at the counter. By this time, the morning rush had finished and only a few people remained in the diner, but Clint welcomed the almost silence.

He sat down heavily onto the stool, propping his elbows onto the counter and burying his head into his hands.

“Rough night?” the waitress asked, sliding a cup of coffee to Clint.

He looked up, eyeing her. She seemed to have thawed out a bit and was offering him a sympathetic look. He reached forward, snagging the coffee in both hands; at least he had his coffee, which was something. He gave her a nod of thanks, and then shrugged.

“It’s about usual to be honest, but thanks for asking.”

“Sure.” She moved on, going down the line of the counter, refilling cups with her pot of coffee.

Clint sighed and took a sip of the black liquid sloshing around in the ceramic cup. He knuckled his eyes and heaved a sigh. It was going to be a long day—scratch that—it was going to be a long fucking week. 


End file.
